


Eye Spots

by Darkstarling



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Existential Crisis, Gen, The Borg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 13:25:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20761073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkstarling/pseuds/Darkstarling
Summary: She has been called many names on countless worlds. The One Who Is Many. The Voice of Darkness. The Harvester Wasp. The Chorus and Conductor. Most often, simply The End. She is the inevitable end of evolution, the bringer of perfection, the terror of a galaxy that can not appreciate her glory.And she is collapsed bonelessly on the floor, staring far away.





	Eye Spots

In the heart of Unimatrix 001 was a chamber that was, to the sensibilities of the Collective, luxurious. What was luxury, after all, but assigning resources beyond necessity? A massively redundant multiplexing subspace relay. A dedicated power core. An open space designated for the use of the chamber’s sole occupant. A wide selection of genetically augmented body parts and precision calibrated cybernetics. In terms of over-allocation, this chamber was richly appointed indeed.

Fit for a queen.

She had been called many names on countless worlds. The One Who Is Many. The Voice of Darkness. The Harvester Wasp. The Chorus and Conductor. Most often, simply The End. Individuals, she had found, could be shockingly repetitive. Entire species had hidden from her, fled from her, fought her, but their destiny had arrived all the same. And now they were all Borg. She was the inevitable end of evolution, the bringer of perfection, the terror of a galaxy that could not appreciate her glory.

And she was collapsed bonelessly on the floor, staring far away. Bodily maintenance processes continued, automatically bringing her to a sitting posture without conscious effort. And she absently noted, in passing, that she had never had the tear ducts removed from this body. There had never been a need before.

The Collective didn’t stop as her focus rushed across it. Small updates flicked for attention. The cube assimilating Species 12191 had been destroyed by a unique subspace weapon, the schematics of which were now spreading through the network. A hundred light year patch had been discovered where warp travel was impossible, and Omega signature detected. The cube had set out immediately for the center at sublight speed, and all assets in the sector rerouted to join it. The annexation of sector 137012 would have to wait for several decades until priorities realigned.

But none of that distracted her from the focus of her attention. A single science drone, conducting genetic surveys on planet with potential for evolving humanoid life. And the butterfly that had landed on its arm.

The wings open and shut slowly, brilliant yellow with dark eyespots. The drone was frozen by her will, down to the autonomic nervous system. It wouldn’t even breath until she so willed.

It was fitting, really, she thought, that it had been something like this. The Collective partitioned and quarantined program anomalies with remarkable efficiency. Effortlessly filtered culture and communications for all things irrelevant, the crude attempt at information warfare not even taxing the firewalls. Even personal pleas, speeches, and arguments given to her directly had never made a lasting impact. Her success was self evident and, in any case, she simply lacked the neurochemistry for empathy. The Collective had ensured it.

So really, this is the only way it could have happened. A random confluence of facts that, alone, were nothing. Just like a binary toxin is undetectable in its individual components.

The process of assimilating Species 13401 had begun with stealing copies of their medical data. Because they considered medicine an integral component of philosophy, it had required excessive processing to filter out the irrelevant data. As such it came to her attention. 

At the same time, the butterfly had landed on the drone’s arm. It had been an unexpected image in the stream. Striking. A moment of curiosity. A cursory tactical analysis had noted the eye spots, a primitive form of information warfare, distracting the attention of predators from more valuable targets. No new information.

And the medical analysis had pinged again, noting that the brains of Species 13401 were of particular interest to their philosophers. The Collective’s analysis as well, necessary for adapting the nanoprobes and biochips. Their philosophers had discussed at length the way separating hemispheres of the brain would produce a body half controlled independently. How most of their decision making was retroactive justification for the actions of semi-independent subsystems. This wasn’t unusual, it was standard across humanoids. No new information. Species 13401’s strange obsession with continuity of consciousness and the nature of free will was dismissed as irrelevant, and deleted.

And she had simply stared, the knowledge still lodged in her short term memory.

She was the voice of the Collective. She commanded and...no, she moved. She was the Collective and it was her. Her body was hundreds of planets, thousands of ships, trillions of drones.

So why did she… SHE… need to think? To pay attention? She could be anywhere… but why wasn’t she everywhere? She gave orders, but the collective went on without her. She… she she she she…

She found herself pacing her her her chamber. Her chamber. Why had she never thought of it? Never questioned the assumptions. Of course if the Collective had a focus of consciousness that made sense but… she flung open her mind. Seeing the notification of the endless march and adaptation and assimilation of the Collective.

All proceeding perfectly well without her.

She found herself pacing, calling up a tactical analytics suite. And the numbers stood stark. A 4 percent reduction in overall efficiency and a 19 percent reduction in strategic success in situations where she actively intervened.

But that couldn’t be right. It literally couldn’t. If she had been a true anomaly, a rogue drone with command authorization that weakened the Collective to that degree, she would have been identified and destroyed. 

She had been identified, she realized. These analyses had simply been called up from memory. They were old.

The reduction in effectiveness. Filed under acceptable strategic losses.

That was when she had collapsed. The merciless analysis continued to run. She was not the consciousness of the collective. She wasn’t valuable for strategic insight or coordination. She was simply an individual made to seem to be these things. But in truth she existed for only one reason.

Eye spots. Bait. 

An individual enemy, something the enemies of the Collective could understand. Something...someone… to keep their attention. To waste their resources in an attempt to destroy. A false hope to draw heroes like moths to a flame. 

And, in the unlikely event of their success, she could simply be replaced.

She had started laughing, discovering as she did that tears could make you choke. An inefficient design. That made her laugh more, all things considered.

Hours later the chamber was empty. A bloody neural transceiver was on the floor, the limbs and cybernetics out of storage. A high speed transport pod departed Unimatrix 001 and entered transwarp space.

The Collective designated a female drone for modification, dismissed the circumstances as irrelevant, and continued on.


End file.
